Jim Talley and Terry Benner in their book True Colors tell the story of a man named Joe who decided to take an afternoon walk through the foothills just above a lake where he had been fishing. Joe was comfortably dressed in shorts, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his leg as he stepped over a small log. It was then he noticed a large diamondback rattler slithering into the undergrowth beside the log.

He looked down at his leg and saw that he was bleeding from two small puncture wounds in his right calf. “I must get to a hospital,” he told himself. “But first, I’ll find that blankety-blank snake and kill it!”

And so Joe began a frantic search for the rattlesnake that bit him. He spent precious time looking under logs and turning over rocks in search of the snake. Meanwhile the venom quickly coursed through his body with the exertion of the search, leaving Joe dizzy and weak. He turned to go back to his car. But after only a few steps, he collapsed on the path and lay there as the venom traveled to his heart, ending his life.

Hours later the sheriff found Joe’s body and called the paramedics. They concluded that Joe had died of a snakebite, but they couldn’t understand the reason; he had only been five minutes from his car and twenty minutes from the nearest hospital. (1)

Joe could have survived his encounter with a rattlesnake. It’s simply that, in his anger, he wanted revenge on the rattlesnake more than he cared about the seriousness of the rattlesnake bite.

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1. . (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1991). pp. 185-186.